Comments

Excellent points. To include the painful experience required to post comments on MSN Spaces. As a geek, I do indeed tend to take Internet access for granted. But that may also be because I’ve had high speed Internet access in North Carolina, Korea (er…South. Did I need to add that?), Afghanistan, and Iraq. It’s put me in a position where I often forget that Internet access isn’t something everyone has…just as they don’t necessarily have access to iPods or CDs.

That being said, Internet access is spreading quickly (as my experience shows). As it spreads, I think tools such as the iPod may have less staying power than, say, the book. But, again, you raise an excellent point: there’s nothing that says one device has to ‘kill’ another.

The real question I had with the Wired article is the idea that “music will not necessarily flow to cell phones.” Maybe because I’ve seen the level of use cell phones get in Korea and Japan, I have a different take on the issue. With time, I see cell phones serving as a portal to large flows of information and entertainment. As people get used to that flow (as I’ve gotten used to high speed Internet access nearly anywhere I travel), devices that don’t connect will likely lose much of their appeal. Is the iPod like the book or like the VCR? If it’s like the VCR, then it would seem the tide of technology could easily wash it away well before we see the end of the book.

Then again, I ALSO read most of my ‘books’ on my computer or PDA…but that’s a whole other discussion, isn’t it?

I think it’s a big mistake to assume that what’s happening in Korea and Japan is going to spread over to the West. I’ve been to Japan a decade ago and they were doing things then which haven’t spread here. The same applies in the other direction.